


Never be Forgot

by toujours_nigel



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 05:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five connected-ish vignettes of Remembrance Day, 1945.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never be Forgot

Gareth had already left for church by the time Lucy was done. Mrs. Timmings had a half-day, and there was so very much to do in that time that Lucy didn’t feel quite correct about leaving it entirely to her capable hands. Besides, while Gareth was needed at church well ahead of the beginning of service, _she_ could comfortably dally till just before it began. The truth was that she didn’t like Remembrance Day; no woman could, she was sure. Raymond had died, and then Laurie, who in her most secret fantasies she had sometimes thought of as her brother returned, had been in such great danger.  
  
That had ended well, though, and she was happy to be spared further horrors. His leg might still give him trouble in cold weather, but he walking nearly as well as ever, and hardly even needed the cane now. And really you couldn’t tell that he wore a special boot, he looked just like any other soldier, and better than some. He was working, and not given to those terrible fits of panic and wildness that so many boys of her own generation had been victim to, and he was nearly thirty: high time to start hinting that he should start thinking of settling down. A woman wanted to be young enough to dote on her grandchildren, after all, and girls these days were quite sensible about war injuries.  
  
Maybe, Lucy thought as she started on the little walk from vicarage to church, she could ask that nice Babs Whitely for dinner someday, along with Laurie. It wouldn’t do to be utterly obvious about it, or Laurie would balk at the start; he was still curiously shy sometimes. Well, Babs could always bring a friend, and she would invite Ralph Lanyon as well.  
  


* * *

  
“Now that’s done,” Ralph said, bolting the door behind them, “let’s see to your knee.”  
  
Laurie had been ignoring it for what felt like hours, and it seemed a rather silly question. There was nothing whatsoever wrong with his knee. He had been telling himself that since Rouse, and had managed to convince himself of it quite well. “Aren’t you meeting Alec?”  
  
“Hang Alec. Sit down, Spud; it’s making my leg ache from sympathy.”  
  
Ralph hadn’t been back long enough for the solicitousness to be anything but an exquisite surprise every time it was offered. Laurie, used for five years to gritting his teeth against lancing pain, found himself swept off his feet and settled on the sofa with cushions. A glass of water and tablets were set on the table beside him, and Ralph peered at him from the armchair opposite. In the harsh light he looked worn.  
  
“You’re too good to me,” Laurie said, feeling very tender of a sudden. Dear old Ralph, how good it was to have him fill the flat with his things and stories and presence, how wonderful after the long, lonely years.  
  
The answering smile stripped the years from Ralph. He looked thirty-one again, where a moment before he’d seemed middle-aged. “I’ve only just begun,” he said, and ducked his head to hide his happiness at the thought.  
  
They had time, now. They were alive if not healthy, and they were together. Laurie, full to the brim with joy, said, “You should go, Alec’ll be waiting.”  
  
“Hang Alec,” Ralph said again, and looked mulish. “He can go carousing with his colleagues.”  
  
“They didn’t know Sandy. He’d be here if it were you,” Laurie said, changing at the last moment the fatal word _me_. Instead he added, “Help me to bed before you go.”  
  


* * *

  
Alec looked comfortably ensconced in one of the tables at the back. The place was overrun by civilians. Not a uniform in sight and everyone chattering. _Christ_. He’d left Laurie at home for this.  
  
Still, Alec deserted his colleagues fast enough that it was something of a sop. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he said, gracelessly pushing past an empty table.  
  
“Neither was I,” Ralph replied. “D’you want to get out of here?”  
  
It wasn’t even evening yet, but already the streetlights had been lit. Ralph, accustomed to the darkness of war, was very nearly disoriented. He had been at sea when the bombs were dropped over Japan. He had always wanted to see the place, but hadn’t been further east than Singapore. Alec, in Bridstow through the war, had already grown accustomed to nearly all the realities of peace and navigated without making a great show of it.  
  
The pub they found was a sailor’s place, known of old to both of them and very nearly full. There was very little talk going on, unlike at the other place. Well, Ralph thought with a measure of forced charity, it wasn’t a civilians’ holiday, though everyone had lost people; they had had more time to mourn. That he was keeping Alec aside from this nameless, faceless _they_ did not occur to him. Alec had formed one of his few exceptions as long as they had been acquainted.  
  
When they’d first done this, November of 1940, the list of their common dead had been considerably shorter. It had started the same way, and Ralph, filling both their glasses, waited for Alec to say “Bim Taylor.”  
  
It was nearly night when Alec tipped the lees into his glass and said, “Sandy Reid,” and let Ralph take him home without argument or protest.  
  


* * *

  
Andrew had stayed in his rooms the previous day. There were no classes in any case, and he hadn’t wanted to face the condescension of a crowd of boys who thought, despite all evidence, that war was glorious; it was bad enough from men who’d fought. He’d shut the windows and slept all day, emerging for dinner only after lights-out.  
  
His first and second formers were a well-behaved lot, and if they stayed in line more for fear of repercussion from prefects than for fear of him Andrew found that little cause of complaint. His task as he saw it was to instil knowledge and a love for it: discipline he left to other hands.  
  
He was dreading his afternoon class with the sixth-form; to a boy they were in the O.T.C and sure to be in grand form after the tribal displays of mourning and grief yesterday. Instead he found them subdued and very careful of him; it was like being back in hospital, except as a patient. After everyone had filed out, Hughes said, “Sir, where did you serve in the war?”  
  
They’d taken his absence as a sign of overwhelming grief rather than revulsion. Andrew said in a rush, “I was a C.O. I drove ambulances.”  
  
Hughes nodded slowly, visibly digesting the information. Presently he said, man to man, “We got evacuated to the country for the duration. My brother joined up in ’43 and was invalided out last year, got his leg blown half off. My mother could hardly bear to look at it. I expect you’ve seen worse.”  
  
“Yes,” Andrew said, shocked. “I’ve seen some horrors. Off with you, now.”  
  
Andrew, packing his texts away, thought him shockingly grown up, before remembering that he was eighteen if he was a day. Not so very young.  
  


* * *

Cynthia had always made white poppies. They had sold them at the CWG since ’33, and she’d done it even in ’39, though there had been protests about it. Dave remembered her coming home flushed and happy, her basket still nearly full. “Well, now I know to go back there tomorrow,” she’d said, and laughed off his attempts to dissuade her.  
  
 _Cynthia._ It should have grown easier after five years without her, but he wasn’t surprised that it hadn’t. Deep into the twenties he’d woken nights from dreams of Bertie Raynes. People did that to you, when you loved them.  
  
A number of the younger Friends, he knew, would be shocked to hear him speaking of love in such a personal way. Or perhaps not. Eric had helped him put a wreath of the poppies on the door had taken over his duties without question. It was a comfortable mistake, when dealing with the young, to assume oblivion on their part. Though Eric was hardly so young; none of them were. The war had made them grow fast and cynical; with Eric, who had begun embittered, it had given rise to boundless compassion: he knew the lowest pits to which people could sink and offered help regardless.  
  
Andrew, who had thought the best of everyone once, was now surprised by common decency. His weekly call had been swamped by mentions of Hughes, a student who’d refused to taunt him about being a C.O. Though on reflection Andrew had mentioned him in earlier conversations as well, always with a degree of approval, if never as repeatedly as this evening. It was worrying, though Andrew had been doing so well ever since the terrible mess with Laurie Odell.  
  
It was time to gently prod him towards marriage. Perhaps one of Eric’s sisters.


End file.
